Francis Lascelles Jardine
Francis Lascelles (Frank) Jardine (28 August 1841 – 19 March 1919) was a Scottish-Australian pioneer who was at the forefront of British colonisation and Aboriginal dispossession in the Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait regions of Far North Queensland.
[1] His father, John Jardine, was a Scottish military officer who came to Australia with his wife in 1840 to take up the offer of a land grant and become a grazier.
Frank's father became a well-known pastoral squatter, Commissioner of Crown Lands and police magistrate in this region, obtaining and selling various properties including "Gobolion" and "The Holmes".
[6] In 1858, Frank's father accepted a position of Commissioner of Crown Lands in the frontier Port Curtis District[7] and in 1861 he also became the police magistrate at Rockhampton.
[8] After completing his schooling in Sydney, Frank joined his parents and siblings at Rockhampton and by 1862 was involved in the business of land sales and subdivision in that town.
[10][11] Frank Jardine and his brother initially began this droving journey from Rockhampton in May 1864 in two separate groups which eventually rendezvoused at John Graham MacDonald's Carpentaria Downs station on the Einasleigh River.
He soon discovered that the local resident Aboriginal population resented the loss of their lands to his cattle stations and on a number of occasions in 1866 they attempted to burn down the structures and also speared dozens of livestock.
There is also a local oral tradition that Jardine with his stockmen and native troopers shot down another large group of people around this time near to where the modern town of Bamaga now stands.
This appointment gave Jardine immense power over the Cape York region as he now was the government representative, had personal ownership of much of the land, controlled the seven police constables stationed at Somerset and also still commanded the four native troopers who had accompanied him on his overlanding journey in 1864.
[15] In May 1868, the local Aboriginal people organised a large assault on Jardine's Point Vallack cattle station which resulted in the death of one of his native troopers named Eulah, and the looting of a significant amount of supplies and firearms.
In the months after this incident Jardine received an extra five Native Police troopers and also decided to sell the troubled Point Vallack cattle station to the government.
[15][16] In June 1869, Jardine discovered that the captain and crew of a pearl-trading cutter named the Sperwer had been killed and their boat burnt by the Kaurareg people living on Muralag Island in the Torres Strait.
[17] Over the next 12 months Frank Jardine and Henry Chester (who was a temporary replacement magistrate at Somerset) conducted at least two large punitive expeditions on Muralag Island.
In July 1869, Jardine led his native troopers and armed crewmen from the blackbirding vessel Melanie in a dawn raid on a village on the island killing many people.
Several inquiries followed but Jardine did not have to face any charges largely due to witnesses being unwilling to give testimony and the Premier of Queensland, Arthur Hunter Palmer, being a personal friend and probable business partner of his.
[15] At the time of his dismissal, Jardine was in a relationship with a fifteen year old Samoan girl named Sana Solia who had been brought to the Torres Strait by the missionary George Turner.
[24] Fortunately for them, the government in that same year had decided to move its base of Torres Strait operations from Somerset to Thursday Island and approached Frank Jardine with the offer to purchase the old site at Cape York.
He accepted and the Premier of Queensland, John Douglas, noted that Jardine would also be able to protect British interests in the area from the remnant Yadhaigana people who still offered resistance to colonisation.
Over this time period he expanded his pearling business, purchasing luggers that would collect shell from as far away as the eastern edges of the Great Barrier Reef and even the Louisiade Archipelago.
[28] Pearling and trepanging luggers that belonged to Jardine and other operators also blackbirded native people from the Bertiehaugh and Ducie River locality to work as forced labour.
The Pall Mall Gazette (London) 1892 Jan 5 reported the arrival of a large quantity of specie, value many thousand pounds, being Torres Straits treasure.
